


Love Is Watching Someone Die

by Godtiss



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-30 03:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Godtiss/pseuds/Godtiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock returns to 221B Baker Street three years after his death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Is Watching Someone Die

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a birthday present to [Caroline](http://thecityofpaper.tumblr.com), who specifically asked for some Reichenangst. Happy Birthday, love! Also, title borrowed from _What Sarah Said_ by Death Cab for Cutie.

It’s a Thursday in mid-March when he gets the call. 

“Sebastian Moran is confirmed dead. Go home, Sherlock. We can handle the rest from here.”

He doesn’t thank his brother. He pockets the phone, ignoring the way the buttons shine through the numerous holes in the fabric – ripped and shredded from months of running, chasing, fighting, barely surviving. He leans against the building behind him. The nearest airport is thirty miles away – Mycroft’s people are in the area, there will be a car waiting for him on the curb in less than three minutes.

There’s a surveillance camera squatting on the corner of the building opposite him. Sherlock spares it a glance – he doesn’t remember how to form a smile, but he manages a brief, thankful nod. He knows Mycroft will understand, will appreciate the gesture.

As if in response, his ride pulls up moments later. And for the first time in three years, Sherlock feels the tension in his shoulders begin to ease.

By the time he makes it back to London, six hours later and in the middle of the night, he can barely hold himself upright. Mycroft meets him when he steps off the plane, actually goes so far as to embrace the shadow that was once his brother. Sherlock doesn’t have the willpower to escape the unfamiliar display of affection, is distantly aware that he leans into the touch more than he’d ever admit to. Mycroft is solid and smells of tea and ink and _home_ and everything Sherlock has missed, everything he has fought for.

“Welcome back,” is all his brother says, but to Sherlock it speaks worlds. He offers a final nod of thanks before allowing himself to collapse into the backseat of the car his brother has summoned for him.

He doesn’t tell the driver where he wants to go – doesn’t think he could get the words out of his chest without choking on the desire laced with each. All the same, he eventually finds himself out on the street, looking up at the door he’d feared he’d never see again save for in his most treasured dreams, his worst nightmares.

Bone-weary and sick with relief, it’s all Sherlock can do to drag his emaciated body those last steps, to raise a pale, shaking hand and open the door that will take him home.

His knees nearly buckle five steps in. He catches himself on the wall, closes his eyes, breathes in the familiar scent of Mrs. Hudson’s biscuits, of her cleaning supplies, of tea and fresh linens and John and – God, _John_.

It’s that name that fuels Sherlock’s steps as he makes his way up the stairs. It is a slow, arduous journey, but he is acutely aware it is the last he will have to make before he is allowed to rest, comforted by John’s presence and the knowledge that they are both alive and safe, finally.

Ahead of him, 221B sits quiet and dark at the end of the hall. There is no light shining beneath the door, no sound save for his own rapid heartbeat. 

The flat – _their_ flat – is unlocked. He is not naïve enough, not desperate enough to think it’s John’s own silent way of inviting him back, of hoping that there was still someone out there to return at all. Yet he still finds himself wishing for it all the same.

For the first time in three years, Sherlock Holmes steps foot into 221B Baker Street, and for the first time in three years there is nothing on his mind – no nagging sensation of _look behind you_ , no feeling of regret or fear or pain, no thought of revenge or death – nothing except for the comfort of being home.

He could cry with the relief of it, had he the energy to spare. Perhaps after he finds John, after he apologizes and hears his name spoken by that voice that he has missed for the last three years. After the world is put right again and things are not back to normal, but are, at the very least, mending.

The flat is dark, but the glow from the streetlamp outside casts uneven shadows over the furniture, over the teacup sitting abandoned on the table, John’s coat resting on the back of his chair, his cane leaning against the armrest. Sherlock wants to touch everything, hold every item that John has held in his absence, to know where John has been and what he’s done and who he’s seen when Sherlock was unable to. When Sherlock was hundreds of miles away, fighting for both their lives and John had no idea, thought Sherlock to be gone and buried under that black marble headstone. A corpse, rotting away while John was forced to move on.

A chill runs down his spine, unwelcome thoughts worming their way into his subconscious like diseases, spreading contagious until the only thing left was the uncertainty that perhaps John _had_ moved on without him. Sherlock had never stopped to consider the possibility, had always (naively) assumed that John would wait for him – the disgraced consulting detective who, in a final act of desperation, had thrown himself over the side of a hospital while his best friend was forced to watch every second of his fall from grace. 

Three years. John had been the only constant thing Sherlock managed to cling to for that time, the only solid thought he was allowed in his world where the uncertainty of his next breath hung like a guillotine over his head.

But just because John was Sherlock’s only thought does not mean that Sherlock was John’s. That knowledge rests uneasily on his chest, a crushing weight that slowly begins to ease the breath out of his lungs, stopping him from drawing in fresh air to clear his head. For a moment, Sherlock lets himself believe that the last three years, spent in hell and far worse, were for nothing.

Though John wouldn’t still be alive had Sherlock not done what he did to protect them both. If nothing else, there is that.

He gasps for breath, feels lightheaded. He closes his eyes.

There is movement in the back of the flat. Not from upstairs, not in John’s room. From down the hall, behind the door that Sherlock once called his.

_He’s gotten himself another flatmate._

The thought is instinctive, unconscious. Of course he had - John wouldn’t have been able to afford 221B without help, and with Sherlock gone there had been no one to pick up the other half of the rent. Mrs. Hudson would have lowered the price as much as possible, but it wouldn’t have been enough. Mycroft had not kept his word.

Of course John lives with someone else now. Sherlock had been a fool to think otherwise, deluded into believing that he would come back to find things exactly as they had been.

Sherlock doesn’t have the energy to turn, to so much as consider leaving the flat. He stands on quivering legs locked at the knees – the only thing keeping him upright – listening to the sound of life where his own should have been.

The door to his old bedroom opens. The hallway is too dark to see whoever stands at the end of it. Sherlock remains rooted, mind quiet and body numb, waiting for the inevitable.

Uneven footsteps. A limp, painful and hesitant, as though the owner could not decide whether to proceed or retreat. The ghost of a breath passing between parted lips, his own heartbeat pounding like a drum in the darkness.

And then a figure steps into the area where the light reaches, however weakly. Short hair grown out, cut again but not the same. Tired eyes wide, but still unmistakably different. Older, sadder. Broken.

Sherlock’s legs finally give out. He is distantly aware of the sensation of falling, hears the sharp sound of his knees hitting the floor. When he looks up John is there, kneeling before him with shaking hands, looking for all the world like he’s seeing a ghost and Sherlock can’t blame him.

Their eyes meet in the gloom, noses barely inches apart. Sherlock is not aware of holding his breath until his lungs protest their mistreatment and he has no choice but to choke in air. 

John’s expression is something out of a nightmare. Sherlock can barely stand the look of unimaginable sadness, of pity – would turn away if it were anyone but John, anyone he hadn’t spent the last three years fighting to keep alive while he himself died.

When John speaks, it is barely a whisper. Sherlock almost doesn’t hear it over the blood pounding through his veins, his breath whistling in and out of his lungs as he sucks in great gulps of air, mouth gaping, gasping. Almost doesn’t hear it over the sound of something in his chest breaking, crushed under the weight of three words.

“You’re not real.”

John stands, face cold and closed to Sherlock. His shoulders form hard lines, silhouetted against the light from the window behind him, eyes looking down at the man at his feet like he knows how this will end – like he’s seen this before. 

And Sherlock can’t say anything, can only mouth John’s name because the weight in his chest is suffocating him slowly.

“You’re dead, Sherlock.”

Whispered in that voice, his name sounds nothing like Sherlock imagined when he lay awake at night, unable or unwilling to sleep because he knew that when he closed his eyes, he would see John in his place. Would see John fighting for both their lives while Sherlock only had a gravestone and a ruined name.

Sherlock’s name is spoken, laced with grief - with regret and loss and pain so deep that it catches in John’s throat, breaks the word into a hoarse noise, raw. 

Sherlock will never forget the fleeting impressions of that morning – of falling, of people gathered around him, of John’s desperate _let me come through please, no he’s my friend, he’s my friend_. Those cold fingers wrapping around his wrist, feeling for a pulse John would not find. Could not find. Because John Watson’s life depended on the end of Sherlock’s, and it had seemed a fair trade.

Never had Sherlock imagined returning to this.

He had prepared for never being allowed to return at all – for spending the rest of his life chasing the ghosts of Moriarty’s complex web, always one step behind Sebastian Moran. In his mind, it had been the worst possible scenario. Never allowed to return, never allowed to speak to John again, to apologize and beg for forgiveness.

Such a fate would have been a kindness compared to the look John is giving him as Sherlock struggles to form a coherent thought, to tell John that he’s real, he’s here, he’s never leaving again.

But the English language is failing him, his tongue too out of practice to form the words, to remember the fine muscle movements that would make John believe him. Believe in him.

“Leave me alone.”

John’s expression is twisted - ugly and foul and tormented and so, so lost. He moves to turn away, to hide his face in the darkness, to block Sherlock from his sight. And suddenly nothing is more important than making him believe. Nothing will ever be so important as long as Sherlock lives.

“John.”

The room goes still. Breathing shallow, body numb, mind stumbling and weak, Sherlock does the only thing he can think of. He reaches out, fingers grasping for John’s, finding them in the dark and clinging to them as tightly as possible until it hurts them both and Sherlock welcomes the pain because it means that John can feel it too. 

“Please.”

Haunted blue eyes lower, gaze resting on their entwined hands - a tangle of bone, muscle, blood, flesh - warm and human and solid and so very, very alive. Sherlock’s pulse beats a staccato rhythm in his wrist - he knows John can feel the vibrations in the air around them, hear the echoing heartbeat reverberate through the walls.

Sherlock gives a gentle tug and John folds, kneels again before him, their knees touching and Sherlock still hasn’t let go of John’s hand, has no intention to. 

“I saw you fall,” John whispers, shaking his head. He does not meet Sherlock’s gaze, eyes still locked on their hands like he has never seen anything quite like it before. Like he can’t believe it.

“I went to your funeral.”

Sherlock knows. From the shadows cast by the trees, he had watched as his own coffin was lowered into the ground, watched as the other mourners slowly trickled away until it was just John. He had watched as his best friend fell apart before the black headstone, heard his quiet plea of _one more miracle, Sherlock, for me_. 

“I buried you,” John chokes. “You’re not real. I’m dreaming and when I wake up I’ll still be here and you’ll be gone and I’ll have to pretend that I’m okay.”

 _Oh, John_.

Sherlock raises his free hand, shaking and hesitant, and John leans into the offered touch. He buries his face in the cupped palm - Sherlock can feel the warm ghost of his breath on the rough, calloused skin.

“You’d think that after three years-“ John’s voice breaks again. He gives a short, breathy laugh, and Sherlock can hear the hysteria clinging to each word. “That after three years I’d be used to this. That I’d be okay.”

Sherlock guide John’s gaze back to him, sees his own turbulent emotions mirrored in those eyes – the grief, the fear, the pain, and the sadness. The faint glimmer of hope.

“It’s been three years for me too,” he says, voice rough with disuse, squeezing John’s hand gently with his own. “But I came home.”


End file.
